The Widening Stain, W. Bolingbroke Johnson
The Widening Stain, W. Bolingbroke Johnson
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

The Widening Stain

Author: W. Bolingbroke Johnson, Nicholas A. Basbanes

Narrator: Todd Menesses

Unabridged: 7 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/23/2024


Synopsis

Murders plague a university library—and only an intrepid book cataloger can solve them.

For the staff of the library at the center of The Widening Stain, it's easy enough to dismiss the death of a woman who fell from a rolling ladder as nothing more than an unfortunate accident. It's more difficult, however, to explain away the strangled corpse of a man found inside a locked room, surrounded by rare and obscure erotica. And that's not all—a valuable manuscript has vanished from the stacks, which means that both a killer and a thief are loose in the facility's hallowed halls. It's up to chief cataloger Gilda Gorham to solve the crimes but, unless she's careful, the next death in the library might just be her own . . .

A humorous and literary Golden Age mystery, The Widening Stain is adorned with as many playful limericks as it is with bibliographic details. The book, which offers a satirical glimpse of academic life at an institution strongly resembling Cornell University, is one of the most beloved bibliomysteries (mysteries involving books) of all time.

About W. Bolingbroke Johnson

W. Bolingbroke Johnson was the pseudonym of Morris Bishop (1893-1973), an American scholar, historian, essayist, translator, and versifier. While best known for his writings on the Middle Ages and his work with light verse, he was an authority on many subjects, including the history of Cornell University, where he taught and served as the university historian. The Widening Stain is his only work of fiction.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Anissa on April 16, 2023

This was worth it, if only for the limericks. I don't run into those very often in my reading so having a character that routinely makes them up and shares them was a delightful novelty. There's a body in the college library and it's up to a tenacious librarian to figure out who did the deed. She al......more

Goodreads review by Blaine on June 09, 2020

What a shame that this is the authors only novel, as he mainly published in the non-fiction genre. A really good book, although a bit dated since it originally was published in the Interwar years, and some of the stuff is downright silly, but the plot is great, the cast of characters is good and from......more

Goodreads review by Charles on June 15, 2023

RTF......more

Goodreads review by Ivonne on April 17, 2020

When The Widening Stain was released in 1942, the author was identified as one W. Bolingbroke Johnson, described as a middlebrow from Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, and a graduate of the Okmulgee Agricultural and Mechanical Institute. Now Rabbit Hash, Kentucky is a real place, and Okmulgee A&M is now part o......more

Goodreads review by Bev on August 24, 2023

Death comes to the university library at a New York college that may remind readers of Cornell. When Mademoiselle Coindreau, the beautiful and alluring French assistant professor, is found dead below the balcony of the library, it is put down to accident. Why the woman left the President's party and......more